The nail-biting finale to the Premier League football season delivered bumper ratings for Sky Sports and Match of the Day on Sunday, with more than 3 million viewers watching Manchester City clinch the title with their injury time win over QPR on the BSkyB pay-TV channel.

Live Super Sunday on Sky Sports 1, which was showing the City game, averaged 1.72 million viewers, a 12.3% share, between 2pm and 6pm on Sunday, peaking with 3.19 million.

Sky Sports News, which updated viewers on all the Premier League action had an unusually high 502,000 viewers (3.6%) for its Gillette Soccer Saturday show on Sunday afternoon, peaking with 907,000 viewers.

The sports news channel was up 181% on its slot average over the past three months, while Sky Sports 2 was up 141%.

BBC1's Match of the Day highlights of the final day of the season had 4.06 million viewers and a 31.2% share between 10.25pm and midnight, peaking with 5.6 million.

Coasting along nicely

Coast, which has circumnavigated the British Isles so many times the presenters must be dizzy, returned to BBC2 from 9pm with 2.9 million viewers and a 12.4% share.

The show, co-produced with the Open University, is now in its sixth series but is still a ratings winner for BBC2 – it was comfortably the channel's most-watched programme on Sunday.

At 9pm competition included an ITV1 repeat of Lewis (8pm-10pm: 4.9 million/20.4%) dropped into the schedule at short notice to replace an episode of Vera. The Blenda Blethyn detective drama was pulled by ITV as it featured a storyline about the death of a serviceman in Afghanistan, the day after an airman and a soldier were killed.

New Sky1 comedy takes flight

The latest Sky1 comedy offering was the third most-watched show of the day on pay-TV channels, behind only Sky Sports' live coverage of the Man City and Man Utd games.

Sunday is a strong night for Sky1, with new episodes of US drama imports Hawaii Five-0 (9pm: 488,000/2.1%) and NCIS: Los Angeles (10pm: 232,000/1.2%) also featuring among the top 20 pay-TV shows yesterday.

ITV2 is also riding high on Sunday nights, with the top four free to air multichannel shows of the day: The Only Way is Essex (10pm: 1.086 million/5.5%), Benidorm (9pm: rpt – 929,000/3.9%), Britain's Got Talent – Live Final (4.25pm: rpt – 804,000/4.8%) and Britain's Got More Talent: Funniest Moments (8pm: 803,000/3.3%).

All ratings are Barb overnight figures, including live, +1 (except for BBC and some other channels including Sky1) and same day timeshifted (recorded) viewing, but excluding on demand, or other – unless otherwise stated. Figures for BBC1, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 generally include ratings for their HD simulcast services, unless otherwise stated

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.